Weighing the Odds: A Course in Probability and Statistics by David Williams

Weighing the Odds: A Course in Probability and Statistics



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Weighing the Odds: A Course in Probability and Statistics David Williams ebook
ISBN: 052100618X, 9780521006187
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Page: 567
Format: pdf


Steven Cherry: This is mainly a book about statistics, but in a college course, frequently statistics and probability are taught together. By far one of the more popular books on sports handicapping, Weighing the Odds in Sports Betting has proven to be a well written and interesting read. To calculate the probability of Bob's winning at least 20 games, you use not only the data that you saw (that Bob won 20 games out of 30) but also the imaginary data of Bob winning 21 out of 30 games, or 22 out of 30 games, all the way up to Bob winning all 30 games. The resulting Over the course of 130 years, that equates to an increase of six hundredths of a degree Celsius (margin of error of 3.9 hundredths at two std deviations). A new college textbook teaches introductory statistics through America's pastime. The existence of random factors in the game do not allow for the claim that war is a deterministic game, yet it is still possible to quantify properties of the initial state that are indicative of a victory probability. The Rules of War The average cases for both statistics are as expected: the mean deck weight and mean initial advantage are both 0, with both statistics normally distributed about a mean of zero at a 99% confidence level. Of course, these states are also highly improbable. Jaynes' demonstration that, in the face of ignorance as to how a particular statistic was generated, the best approach is to maximize the (informational) entropy. Wouldn't it be great if there were a statistics book that made histograms, probability distributions, and chi square analysis more enjoyable than going to the dentist? 'David Williams is a very distinguished mathematician with an enthusiasm for the subject which lights up the book. If your model of 'cheating' is that it increases the odds of winning to 2/3rds, well then of course it is a good fit to data in which we have a 2/3rd win rate. Chances are good they'll bite, since from their perspective you look like a stock-picking genius. Was a popular book for grade-school kids called How and Why: The Science of Sport that used examples from various sports to teach basic concepts of science: potential energy, angular momentum, speed versus acceleration, weight versus mass.

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